Case Studies

“Example is not the main thing in really influencing others. It’s the only thing.”

Dr Albert Schweitzer

Case Studies are important for customers considering buying a service. They show whether similar issues have been tackled before, and how force tutoring can be innovative and specifically address the company's needs. If you get to the stage of wanting me to develop programs for you, then I will be happy to provide references directly relating to these case studies.

“We trained hard. But it seemed that every time that we started to form into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing. And what truly wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization”.

You may think that this quote comes from some hard pressed middle manager from some point in the last fifteen years; actually it is a quote from Gaius Petronius Arbiter, The Satyricon, first century, AD.

The requirement stemmed from how this very large, global IT manufacturer structured its customer facing teams. At this Global supplier, the Account Manager controls the whole cross functional virtual team throughout the client engagement, this gives the Account Manager total accountability for the client. However, many of these people have never managed people before, and certainly had no experience of managing a virtual team that could be geographically dispersed. To spice up the program design, it was pointed out that every Account Manager would have a different set of resources and hence virtual team depending on their sector, location and customer. This became a major part of the solution - how do you give good structured processes and help when it is different for each person on the given program? The answer was that the program workbook became the personal action plan (PAP) for each delegate, structured to allow them to build their own resource network and plan based on their personal situation. The key learning modules were followed by team exercises to understand how different people would manage the teams, and then individuals would develop their PAP. Example solutions were given using "indicative content", really a mechanism to show how the PAP would be developed in a particular scenario.I piloted the program and then ran a number of Train The Tutor Trainer (TTT) sessions in both the United Kingdom and US. The program material has been translated into five languages and is being run by in-country trainers.

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, it will be those that cannot learn, then unlearn and subsequently relearn."

Alvin Toffler - Future Shock

In the communications industry there are two types of people - Bell Heads and Net Heads i.e. those who understand voice and those who understand data. This old, established voice products manufacturer needed to move into the data world, and the unified communications market with the onset of technologies like VoIP (Voice over IP). Through mergers and acquisitions they acquired lots of data companies and their associated products and services, but the expected revenues did not come. A quickly performed analysis of the situation showed that the people were uncomfortable introducing the new data products to their customers. Many had board level relationships with their customers, but felt they did not have the data background to allow them to discuss data with them. A needs analysis was completed and presented the findings to the European board to gain their buy-in to move forward with the project. This became known as the right-angled turn, impacting the culture of the company and the way it did business. I designed a program consisting of 3 lots of 3 day workshops, which culminated in becoming certified to sell data, which was then linked to the force's compensation plan. To ensure it didn't become a dry technical program, the scientific techniques were introduced on a pre-programmed CD, with a web-based test prior to joining the actual program. The actual up front and personal learning was focused on the markets, customers' business drivers and applications to deliver business results. All of this was underpinned with role plays, where each team worked with customers to deliver a business solution. The role play ran throughout the 3 sessions, developing and deepening the people's understanding of what a customer wanted from them. As there were 600 people to train across Europe, I ran the pilots and then ran TTT sessions to train 6 delivery teams of two people. The take-up of the program meant that the whole force was trained in 18 months, and the program spun-off to other groups in Europe like Pre-, Operations and Marketing, in addition to being run across the Asia Pacific region.

This global voice carrier had been very successful at selling voice minutes around the whole globe. Their minutes were much cheaper than those of the national carriers since they owned all their very own global fibre network. Their selling pitch was easy - how much do you pay for your international calls now, we can do it for half the price and the same quality. Over time the voice minutes market was driven down and became purely commodity, with smaller and ever smaller margins. The company decided to leverage its considerable customer base and move into high value managed voice and data services. But the existing force had little technical knowledge, and no knowledge of how businesses operated in a managed services environment. I worked as part of a consortium of 5 independent trainers, each bringing different skills to the table. In terms of the pre-workshop CD, my focus was to develop the business modules to bring the force up to speed on current business thinking and how scientific techniques were being used by business. This was carried through into the actual workshop, where I designed and ran the role plays taking the delegates through initial opportunity spotting meetings to presenting the business solution back to the customer. My program was very successful, with managed services revenues increasing by 400% in the year following the workshops. Further sessions followed focused at Director and senior management level, addressing issues like recruitment, forecasting and managing the pipeline. All these programs were rolled out to 500 people in Europe and 100+ in Asia Pacific.

I was delegated the Leader/Mentor for the Academy, this program bringing new non-industry and management people into a rapidly expanding scientific techniques company. Working into the European board of a global communications company, developed and delivered the “ Academy” concept. This recruited bright graduates who were already successful people, but not from the communications industry, and trained them to perform in this sector. Not technical tutoring but applying scientific techniques to customer business drivers using both on and off the job tuition with team assignments. The program ran over six months with a one-week long workshop every month, and team assignments to be worked on for the intervening periods. The finale of the program was team presentation to members of the European board focusing on the production or a live customer or prospect. The program was tremendously successful and the graduates from the academy quickly made significant contributions to revenues and were greatly in demand within the company.

Case Studies are important for customers considering buying a service. They show whether similar issues have been tackled before, and how force tuition can be innovative and specifically address the company's needs Working jointly for the VPs of HR and European Marketing developed a skills plus knowledge profiling system to assess the skills and knowledge of the existing force. Recommended individual tuition plans to improve performance of under par performers.

To go back to the Main Page (click here ) To look at John Fowler's Resume (click here ) To contact me John Fowler about your requirements email john@datacoms.co.uk or call +44 (0)1625-537664
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